I was going through a kind of 'industrial photography' phase, and I figured I'd
walk around north of town and photograph the rotting remains of industrial Charleston.
I was particularly fascinated by those war-of-the-worlds style, black water towers.
I think they have been knocked down now. I spent some time in that complex (which
was really pretty
amazing) and then drifted west a little bit, just looking around. I came upon
this very large, flat building that was extremely low to the ground. A whole bunch
of noise was coming out of it, so I went around to the sliding doors at the front
and looked inside. The distance from floor to ceiling was about six feet, and
the second I stuck my head in, a blast of incredibly hot air just about choked
me. It must have been 125 degrees in there.
I
looked around, but couldn't see any reason why it would be so hot. The place was
huge, like half the size of a football field.

Inside, there was a dirt-encrusted, very sweaty guy driving an incredibly beat-up,
flattish bulldozer around on the dirt floor. He was going really, really fast,
back and forth across the lumpy floor. The noise was incredible, and the heat
was unbearable. The weird thing was, he wasn't pushing or pulling or bulldozing
anything. He was just driving around, forward and backward, doing something
mysterious. I watched this happen for about fifteen minutes.

Eventually this other guy came out and asked me what I was doing. I told him
I was 'looking for old things to photograph.' He said, "Hey, take a pitcher
of this forklift! It's from 1903!" He gets on this rattly, rusty old forklift
and drives away.

The whole thing gave me a really sinister feeling, like I had caught them in
the act of burying a UFO or something. I never figured out what was really going
on in there.